The Halo franchise has always been synonymous with the Xbox. The series single-handedly launched the console into the competitive market, and with good reason. Bungie had crafted two of the finest console first-person shooters ever made. Now, three years after the release of the Xbox version, the game finally arrives on the PC for Windows Vista. As you might expect, a console shooter of this age doesn't transform well into the realm of high-quality PC shooters, and many aspects of Halo 2 suffer as a result.

In the game, you play as the Master Chief, a hardened space commando, who's so good at what he does that people only refer to him as "chief". Earth has been at war with an alien race known as the Covenant, who believe that a ring-shaped object called Halo is a religious artifact that will lead them on some sort of journey. Since Halo turned out to be a weapon that could destroy entire galaxies, the Master Chief wound up destroying it in the first game. In Halo 2, you find out that there may be more Halo rings scattered throughout the universe, and it becomes your job to get to them before the Convenant can. Throw in some Convenant in-fighting, the Chief going at it alone, and a super cheesy cliffhanger ending and you have the sum of the Halo 2's story in a nutshell.

Three years have passed, and Halo 2 hasn't aged well.

The single-player campaign in Halo 2 is a mixed bag. Things appear promising at first, with tactical, visceral combat, a fun dual-wielding mechanic, a variety of weapons to fire, driving segments to break up the action, and enemies that exhibit some pretty good artificial intelligence. However, as time goes on, the novelty of these features becomes overshadowed by some poor level design choices. Many of the indoor environments consist of extremely symmetrical layouts, with rooms that don't differ enough to hold your attention for very long. To make matters worse, these same rooms are often copied and pasted throughout an entire map, even to such extremes where multiple floors seem almost completely identical. This causes numerous parts of the game to feel like they are dragging on unnecessarily, and really hurts the pacing of the experience. If you're looking to play this game cooperatively with a friend, you'll also be disappointed, as the co-op mode found in the original Xbox version has mysteriously disappeared, effectively destroying whatever replayability the campaign could have had.

On the multiplayer side of things, Halo 2 fares quite a bit better. Online play on the PC version operates a bit differently than what you may be used to, and this is largely because of the new Games for Windows Live service. Similarly to Xbox Live, you must first create either a silver or gold account before you have the ability to access any multiplayer functionality. The feature sets for these accounts differ from Xbox Live in that you don't actually have to pay to participate in multiplayer games. Silver accounts are still free, and allow you to utilize the game's built-in server browser for matchmaking. Gold accounts offer a few extra perks like the ability to use voice chat and a quick match option, but there's nothing too spectacular about any of these features. Fortunately, if you have an existing Xbox Live gold account, that will work just as well.

Not only does Halo 2 have the usual multiplayer modes including deathmatch (called slayer), team deathmatch, and capture the flag, but there are numerous match modifiers, similar to Unreal Tournament's mutators. These subtle modifications incorporate numerous weapon and rule restrictions into a match, and provide an almost overwhelming selection of game modes from the get-go. Combine that with 23 included maps as well as the ability to create your own, and you have a highly replayable multiplayer suite that is without a doubt the highlight of the package.

That is, of course, if you can ignore the glaring issues with the available control options. As a Games for Windows product, Halo 2 includes support for both the Xbox 360 gamepad and the mouse and keyboard. The gamepad performs how you would expect, and those who have played the Xbox version of the game will immediately feel at home here. Using the gamepad also enables auto-aim, which is fine for single player, but for some reason also works in online play. Since the mouse suffers from a lack of precision, this can create an imbalance in multiplayer. Because the highest level of mouse sensitivity offered by the game really isn't that fast when compared to other modern (and even not so modern) PC first-person shooters, a moderately skilled gamepad user with tweaked sensitivity can and will win most of the up-close battles. In fact, the maximum sensitivity is so slow that it almost feels as if it's bound by the speed limits of a gamepad. Halo 2 is one of the first PC shooters where using a gamepad is superior to a mouse and keyboard in almost every way, and gamers who were looking to enjoy precise control with the mouse will definitely be disappointed.

The multiplayer definitely has its moments.

Perhaps what's suffered the most from the transition to the PC is Halo 2's graphics. Granted, the developers did increase the quality of the textures and make other numerous graphical tweaks, but the game still looks like a port of an Xbox title released three years ago. Even on high resolutions, nearly every aspect of the visuals look dated, from the player models, to those same enhanced textures. Many of the environments have a very flat, simple look to them, and none of it looks very appealing to the eye. The game also sports an absolutely atrocious frame rate. Even on a high-end PC, the frame rate border-lines on unplayable at parts, with frequent drops into the single digits. Adjusting the visual options to a lower setting has absolutely no effect on improving performance in this regard. Some of the more specific slowdowns occurred at the same parts of the Xbox version of the game, so the frame rate problems seem to be more of a porting issue than anything else. Overall, the graphics simply don't cut it in today's highly competitive PC market.

On the flipside, the game's sound is quite well done. The soundtrack is top-notch, with an incredibly moody feel, and dynamic themes that automatically kick in and fade out at all the right moments. The voice acting is equally excellent, with believable dialog and quality writing. This especially shines true when you hear the random comments from your squadmates after taking out a group of baddies. The sound effects also feature good ambient sound and appropriate weapon noises. All in all, the sound is just as good now as it was back on the Xbox.

In the end, Halo 2 ultimately suffers from too many of the ill effects of porting a game from a console several years after its release. Even though there is a good game to be found here, it's buried underneath layers of graphical and control problems, porting issues, and imbalanced multiplayer. Halo 2 for the PC offers very little to those who have already played the Xbox version, and even less to those who are looking for a true PC first-person shooter experience. If you don't have a Xbox or 360 and really want to play Halo 2, this could be the ticket, just don't expect anything more than a sloppy three-year-old console port.